Against Epiphany Junkyism

On the pitfalls of spiritual ecstasy and mountaintop experiences.

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Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash

Over the past few months, I've had two intense spiritual experiences. The first was a literal mountaintop experience: I was hiking, and then, without warning, the world transfigured, and my life changed. Read that article here.

A few months after this divine encounter, I attended the New Warrior Training Adventure: an intense men's retreat that is deliberately designed to create an altered state of consciousness where cathartic emotional transformation can take place. My NWTA was a shit show, and you can read about it here and here.

I've been thinking about mountaintop experiences ever since. I think of mountaintop experiences as cathartic, ecstatic, and transcendently mystical experiences that often defy description. These include group ritual, psychedelic trips, and spiritual retreats.

My life has been changed by the mountaintops. They have given me touchstone memories that orient my compass towards the life I want to live. This is the invaluable benefit of such experiences: they can, in the best-case scenario, reveal to us the constellations by which we navigate our life.

And yet, as I've contemplated my own mountaintop experiences, I have become more suspicious of them. If one isn't careful, the mountaintop becomes compulsive and leads us away from spiritual development.